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Julington Creek man jumps on e-cigarette craze

Shane Johnson is a vamp for vape, and the fruity smells that waft through his house accentuate his enthusiasm.

In fact, Johnson is so into “vaping” — e-cigarettes that emit e-vapor — that Johnson decided to start an e-cigarette business from his home near Julington Creek off County Road 210 in north St. Johns County. Fuzion Vapor now offers dozens of flavors of e-vapor that’s essentially “juice,” as Johnson describes it, made largely from candy flavoring.

The flavors for e-cigarettes are inserted into a small chamber at the end of a batter-powered tube that resembles a cigar. The juice is charged and turned into vapor, which is then inhaled. Flavors such as “Endless Summer,” “Purple Pieman,” and “XTC” are featured on the fuzionvapor.com website as the hottest sellers of the month.

Some flavors are personified with monikers such as “Magnum, P.I.,” “Chuck Norris Blood” and “Bob Marley Blood.”

No matter what the label, vaping is the hot trend that’s supposed to replace smoking. Some juices are loaded with nicotine down while others are simply vaped for the flavor, sans nicotine. A small container of juice can cost as little as $3.25 up to a 30 ml bottle that costs $12.50. The actual e-cigarrets can sell from $20 to as high as $200, though Johnson only manufactures the juice. The vaping devices are sold separately.

The 38-year-old Johnson is a transplant from Baltimore, Md., who moved to St. Johns County last year with his wife, Brandy, two daughters and a son. A computer engineer for a bank by trade, Johnson said he’s now pulling in about $7,000 per month in revenues for his vape juice product.

How did you come about starting this business?I was a heavy smoker for about 18 years. In October last year, I tried an electronic cigarette that you get at a mall and I was OK with that. But I didn’t like the performance. … I guess I went to the next step and I started buying the juice to fill up to vape it. I decided that I can make this and I love to cook, so I just took the different ingredients, mixed them together and they taste good.

How long does a bottle of Fuzion Vapor last?It just depends on how much you actually vape. … There’s no smoke, there’s no combustion at all.

You know what it’s like to smoke, are there addiction issues here?Definitely. We have different ranges from really high (nicotine) to nothing at all.

Do you have FDA approval or how does that work?That’s the real controversial part right now. It’s not FDA approved and it probably won’t be because the FDA classifies it as a tobacco product, even though it’s really not a tobacco product.

Do you face any kind of issues by distributing something like that?No, nothing yet. I would imagine eventually, within the next year or two the FDA is going to require certain standards, and that’s when you’re going to see the price of this go up probably 10-fold.

So this is kind of like the stage of synthetic marijuana when there was a regulation free time there?Well the fake marijuana, there’s thousands of chemicals and most of them are carcinogens. With this, there’s really three ingredients, this is basically USDA approved candy flavoring.

What’s that like to vape in “no smoking” areas, is it kind of emancipating?It’s awesome (laughs). I love it. Airports are the best. There have been a lot of times I’ve been at airports and I’ll sit at the bar having a beer. People with long layovers and they’re heavy smokers come in, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve converted.